1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to printing systems, and more particularly, to printing systems that make use of ink container vessels for delivery of ink to printing delivery systems.
2. Related Art
Printing systems, such as ink-jet printing systems, typically use ink container vessels. Most ink container vessels used in popular printing systems today deploy some type of solid material within their reservoirs such as porous material or collapsible film. The porous material and/or collapsible films are used in the vessel containers to provide a means of preventing ink from leaking out of vents in the containers. For instance, it is common for reservoir pressure to build-up in vessels due to upsurges in temperature or changes in altitude which can result in ink leakage. These solid parts also prevent spillage of ink through vent holes of the container vessels during shipment and handling of them.
Such ink container vessels are typically purchased pre-filled with ink and are discarded after they run out of available ink. A serious drawback of such vessels, however, is that they often strand between 15% and 50% of their initial total fill of ink after depleting available ink for the printing system. “Strand” means that ink remains in the container vessels and cannot be accessed by the printing system. In other words, most current ink container vessels permanently leave behind up to half their initial volume of total ink in the vessel when the container needs to be discarded. Ink becomes trapped and lodged in nooks of the container to become permanently stranded and/or becomes trapped in porous materials used inside a vessel to retain the ink.
Moreover, volumetric efficiency of an ink supply container vessel suffers because of the presence of solid materials throughout the reservoir of a vessel. Such solid parts fill volume that may otherwise be used to store ink. Additionally, printer manufacturers often construct ink container vessels with larger volumetric ink capacities, in order to compensate for the stranding of large percentages of ink. Unfortunately, larger vessels also increase the total size of printer products, because printer systems must be able to accommodate these larger vessels. Larger vessels also require higher initial fill volumes of ink, which is costly.
Furthermore, current ink container vessels are also environmentally unfriendly; because they often cannot be recycled due to the amount of stranded ink left in the vessels once they have to be discarded (i.e., once there is no available ink for printing).
To date, attempts to create ink container vessels that do not strand ink and are volumetric efficient are too costly or are ill-suited with the conveniences of current print system designs.